Drayton tried to laugh, but the feeble effort died on his hot lips. He spat on the ground, and then tried to lift his eyes back to the eyes of Greta, but they fell to the whip that he held in his hand. "Imprison me, Paul Drayton! I shall not be the first you've imprisoned. Imprison me, and I shall be rid of you and your imposture!" she said, raising her voice. Drayton leaped to the saddle. "I'll do it!" he muttered; and now, pale, crushed, his braggadocio gone, he tugged his horse's head aside and brought down the whip on its flank. Parson Christian turned to Mr. Bonnithorne. "Follow him," he said, resolutely, and lifted his hand. The lawyer made a show of explanation, then assumed an air of authority, but finally encountered the parson's white face, and turned away. In another moment Greta was hanging on Parson Christian's neck, sobbing and moaning, while the good old Christian, with all the mellowness back in his wrinkled face, smoothed her hair as tenderly as a woman. "My poor Paul, my dear husband!" cried Greta. "Ah! thanks be to God, things are at their worst now, and they can't move but they must mend," said the parson. He took her indoors and bathed her hot forehead, and dried with his hard old hand the tears that fell from eyes that a moment before had flashed like a basilisk's. Toward five o'clock that evening a knock came to the door of the vicarage, and old Laird Fisher entered. His manner was more than usually solemn and constrained. "I's coom't to say as ma lass's wee thing is taken badly," he said, "and rayder sudden't." Greta rose from her seat and put on her hat and cloak. She was hastening down the road while the charcoal-burner was still standing in the middle of the floor. CHAPTER VIII. When Greta reached the old charcoal-burner's cottage, the little one was lying in a drowsy state in Mercy's arms. Its breathing seemed difficult; sometimes it started in terror; it was feverish and suffered thirst. The mother's wistful face was bent down on it with an indescribable expression. There were only the trembling lips to tell of the sharp struggle that was going on within. But the yearning for a sight of the little flushed countenance, the tearless appeal for but one glimpse of the drowsy little eyes, the half-articulate cry of a mother's heart against the fate that made the child she had suckled at her breast a stranger, whose very features she might not know--all this was written in that blind face. "Is he pale?" said Mercy. "Is he sleeping? He does not talk now, but only starts and cries, and sometimes coughs." "When did this begin?" asked Greta. "Toward four o'clock. He had been playing, and I noticed that he breathed heavily, and then he came to me to be nursed. Is he awake now? Listen." The little one in its restless drowsiness was muttering faintly, "Man--go-on--batter--toas." "The darling is talking in his sleep, isn't he?" said Mercy. Then there was a ringing, brassy cough.